


Remembering Sunday

by reciprocityfic



Category: Fringe
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-11
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-07 12:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reciprocityfic/pseuds/reciprocityfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because sometimes, coming home isn't all it's cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remembering Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: YAY AO3 ACCOUNT :D Reposting everything from FF.net. Hopefully I'll some new stuff to post soon. Right now, though, major writer's block is in the way. Meh. I'm at the beach - maybe that will help.
> 
> This takes place mid-season four, immediately after Peter's return.
> 
>  
> 
> **In this story, Peter doesn't seem so shady to everyone. Also, the thought that amberverse is not his own never really crosses his mind. Hence, he's not quite so willing to surrender Olivia to other men. (Sorry, Lincoln. :P)**
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Fringe.

He comes back.

He arrives in the middle of a lake where years ago he drowned in cold, murky water, alone and confused and knowing that this wasn't where he was supposed to be. He arrives now just as lonely, but the feeling is tempered with his knowledge that he's finally in the right place.

Soon, he will be home.

* * *

Of course, as she stares at him with empty, bewildered eyes, those green eyes that he's missed _so much_ , he supposes he should've known it wouldn't be that easy. Nothing in his life, in any universe or timeline, has been easy.

He sees them all – Olivia, Walter, Astrid, Broyles – so distant, so cold, so hesitant to even listen to what he has to say. His father, his _wife_ , all of them, so _unwilling_ to even put an ounce of trust in him.

He observes their lives, how things have come to work in his absence. He sees a tried-and-tested system that works. He sees people that know what they're doing and do it well. He sees Special Agent Lincoln Lee. He sees his replacement.

He sees that maybe they never needed him at all.

He never thought that coming home would hurt this much.

* * *

Nor did he expect Lincoln Lee to become such a thorn in his side.

He notices the looks, the smiles, the little comments he makes that she doesn't pick up on, or maybe chooses to ignore. He hopes it's the latter. Maybe that means she doesn't feel the same way.

But it's obvious that the agent's feelings for Olivia translate between universes.

It doesn't help that when he tries to make the same advances, he's met with unfeeling stares and dismissive comments. He'd rather have his attempts at winning back her affection met with ignorance than distaste. He tells himself to just give her time. She's still his Olivia, she's just lived through different circumstances. So she's different. If he only gives her time…

* * *

As weeks tick by, he nearly stops wishing for his Olivia.

He just wants one that will talk to him voluntarily once and a while, maybe go out for a drink sometime. Hell, she can bring Lincoln. He wants one that will smile when he catches her eye, one that won't back up and stiffen when he comes near her.

He wants a friend. He doesn't want to be lonely.

But, alas, nothing changes, and if he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the icy water of Reiden Lake around him as he sinks down onto the gray, slimy silt at the bottom. There is nothing but darkness and ice above him, and when he inhales, the liquid burns his mouth, nose, and lungs.

He can't breathe.

* * *

 

But even in those gloomiest moments, though she can't remember him, though she looks at him like he's a stranger, she finds a way to save him.

When the darkness engulfs him, when his eyes close as he sits on the bottom of the lake and threaten never to open again, she is all he sees behind his lids.

Reiden Lake becomes a small bed. The water transforms into white bedsheets. He is not cold, but warm – _so warm_. He is not alone – she is in his arms.

Her lips turn up.

_"This is my favorite time of day. The sunrise. When the world is full of promise."_

And he knows that he will swim oceans, wake up to a thousand lonely days, if he is able, someday, to fall asleep next to her once again.

* * *

He finds out. Even though he thinks they're trying to hide.

It's nothing, really, that gives them away. In fact, it's one of the ways they attempt to conceal it, but he calls their bluff almost immediately. Reading people – it's one of his specialties.

He stares at the purposeful space between them. He wouldn't have noticed anything suspect if it wasn't for the fact that Agent Lee's close proximity to her and Olivia's acceptance of it drove him mad. But there is a pointed distance there now, and as his eyes flicker back and forth between the two agents, he _knows_. He knows with everything inside himself.

She catches his eye for a fleeting moment before he walks from the room.

He knows that he shouldn't be angry, that he was never here for her to fall in love with him. Lincoln was. And maybe she didn't want to be alone anymore.

But he _is_ angry. He is furious. He _hates_ Lincoln Lee, and he thinks that he might just hate her if he didn't love her so, so much.

He sits down on the bed in Walter's room, and as the anger inside him changes from a blazing fire to a deep simmer, another feeling makes itself known. The searing pain manifests itself in his chest, cutting across his heart like the drag of a blade against his skin.

He's never felt so broken and helpless.

His stomach flips and twists as he lets out a sob. He's going to be sick, he can feel it, so he grabs his jacket and walks outside into the fresh air. He needs to clear his head.

(He thinks he heard her voice calling his name as he walked from the lab, but he can't be sure. And even if he did, why would he stop? Her face brings a pain that makes him want to fall to the ground and scream.)

 _Just give her time_ , a voice inside him whispers. _She'll remember. She has to._

She _**has**_ to.

He's so homesick.

* * *

 

"I was fine without you."

She follows him, and he supposes that this should make him happy, because at least she's making an effort, right?

He rolls his eyes. A guilt-ridden effort.

They're sitting on a bench somewhere on the Harvard campus. They've been here before, in the beginning, when she was still a brave, broken, young FBI agent who was in over her head, and he was a lonely con-man looking for his place in the world. He told her that she wasn't alone. She doesn't remember, of course.

She sits there, telling him how _sorry_ she is, that he just doesn't _understand_. He admits that he's being short with her. Rude, even. She doesn't know that it's a defense mechanism, to keep him from sobbing in front of her.

But she is, after all, Olivia, and he should've known she wouldn't put up with his self-pitying bullshit.

"I was fine without you."

His stomach drops to his feet. And he won't hear her words.

"Excuse me?"

She looks at him, and he sees tears glistening in her eyes.

"I was fine without you." The words, previously quietly, are now said with conviction.

He's going to be sick again.

He turns away and shakes his head.

"The hell you were," he whispers.

"But I was," she insists, wringing her hands together in front of her. "I had a job. Walter was like my father. Astrid and I were friends. We went out for drinks and pretended to be normal every now and again. I have Lincoln now…I was fine."

He gets up wordlessly, without another glance at her.

"Peter, I'm sorry!"

He doesn't turn or acknowledge her words as he walks away. He reaches the car the FBI gave him eventually, getting in and slamming the door shut. He screams, finally lets himself scream, laying his head against the steering wheel and bringing his fist down onto the dashboard with a loud bang. He closes his eyes. Tears fall from behind his eyelids.

He's in Reiden Lake again. The world around him begins to fade in and out, in and out.

He can't breathe.

* * *

When he finally gets to go to the bridge, he stares up at the huge machine. It stands ominous and dormant in the room. He stands at its feet and simply stares up at it, that awful machine. That awful machine that ruined his life, that took everything away from him.

He _hates_ that machine.

He is startled when he sees, out of the corner of his eye, her approach and stand next to him. They haven't talked or interacted on anything more than a professional level since their argument. Him, because he's still ridiculously angry. Not at her, necessarily, or even Lincoln anymore, but at life, at the hand he's been dealt. And it causes him physical pain to look at her. Her, if she's guilty or just done making an effort, he doesn't know.

She stares up at the machine, her face unreadable.

"Maybe this is your chance," she whispers.

"Chance for what?"

He follows her gaze as it moves up to the two windows near the ceiling of the room, each one showing a different universe. A blanket of gray clouds versus blue skies. Boeings versus Zeppelins.

She smiles slightly.

"Your chance to finally go home."

* * *

So he goes home. It's worth a shot, isn't it?

He tells no one except her that he's leaving. A part of him feels bad for keeping Walter in the dark, but then again, Walter barely looks at him nowadays, so what's the point?

She takes him to the bridge on a cold night in early December. They say their farewell like professionals, coworkers who are each uninvested in the other. The word 'goodbye' falls from both of their lips, quiet and detached. He goes to leave.

"Peter."

He stops and turns to face her. Her poker face has slipped. The corners of her mouth are turned down, and he thinks he might see the tiniest shard of doubt in the back of her deep, green eyes.

For a moment, he allows himself to hope.

Her mouth opens, but she closes it again. She pushes her blonde hair behind her ear as she hesitates.

"Good luck," she says finally.

He stares down at the floor and sighs, nodding his head slowly.

"Thanks."

He walks through the doors to the other side, but he glances back. He stares back at her. And he tells himself the gleam he sees in her eyes is not a result of tears, but of the lighting in the room.

He ignores the part of him that says this is wrong, _so_ wrong. Things are different now.

 _Run back to her_ , it says still. _Give her time. She'll remember._

The doors slide closed.

* * *

The people over there, they don't remember him either.

But there's something beautiful about the other side.

They listen to him. They _believe him_.

When he tells his father and mother that he is their _son_ , they don't scoff or shake their heads. They don't call him a liar, they don't say he's losing his mind.

They greet him with tears of joy and warm embraces. His mother makes him bacon. They clothe him, they house him, they _trust_ him. They love him without a second thought.

And this almost feels like home.

* * *

The other side is perfect, in theory.

He lives with his parents in a spacious house on the Hudson River. He eats breakfast with them every morning before following his father to work. He assists Olivia Dunham, Lincoln Lee, and Charlie Francis in solving cases with Fringe Division. The team goes out to get a drink and a bite to eat. He goes home and talks with his mother and father. They eat up his every word, eagerly wanting to know everything they've missed since the last time they saw him, six years old and slowly dying. He doesn't know exactly what to tell them, since his stories are of things that could've happened but never did here in this universe, during this timeline. They listen all the same.

He has a family. He has friends. He even has Olivia Dunham, albeit as just an acquaintance. But if he's honest, he'd given up pining for Olivia as anything more than that a while ago.

The other side is perfect, in theory.

But there's that one lingering problem with the other side that he can't completely forget, like a scar that won't fade or a crack in a mirror that can't be entirely fixed no matter how hard one tries.

It's the reason he can't be comfortable here, the reason sleep evades him at night. It's the reason he doesn't think he'd pursue this Olivia even if she didn't have Frank.

It's the same reason he couldn't stay when he first came here, when his father brought him to the other side. It's the same reason he could never love this Olivia Dunham, even though she's happier and lighter and quicker with a smile.

This universe wasn't _his_ universe. This Olivia wasn't _his_ Olivia.

Everything around him seems like home. It looks like home and sounds like home. It smells, tastes, and _feels_ like home.

But he knows it's not home.

* * *

He leaves.

Why he does, he can't really even explain to himself, let alone the people around him. This may not be home, but here people accept him. That's at least better than the other universe.

_(Isn't it? Isn't it?)_

He leaves, and his mother tries to keep a straight face as he tells her, but he can't miss the way her bottom lip quivers or the tears that she wipes from her eyes as he walks from the room.

His father, surprisingly, grudgingly, helps him.

"Who should I contact over there? To collect you?"

Her name comes to his lips automatically, but he stops and hesitates. He's not sure he wants to face her yet.

"Philip Broyles," he decides finally. His father nods once.

A few days later, he stands at the doors to the bridge, nothing with him except the clothes on his back. His father shakes his hand and tries to smile, but it looks misplaced on his face. It shouldn't; this man has been nothing but pleasant with him since he arrived. But when he looks at this man, he still sees the cruel secretary that tried to scheme him into destroying the world he loved. The man who shot a bullet through his wife's head.

"You could stay, Peter," his father says just before he leaves. He thinks he sees a little desperation in his old eyes.

He sighs, and looks down at his feet before smiling regretfully at him.

"No, Walter. I can't."

* * *

Broyles leads him from the facility on Liberty Island, his face stoic and his strides long and even. When they step outside, he drops two sets of keys into Peter's hand: one to his car, the other to his apartment, both furnished by the FBI.

He stuffs his hands into his pockets and wraps his coat around him a little tighter as the cold wind whips against him.

"Thanks," he mumbles. Broyles nods once.

"Why didn't you tell anyone you were leaving?"

"I told Agent Dunham."

The tall man stares at him, not satisfied with his answer.

"I don't know. I guess…it seemed that you guys didn't really need me over here."

"Didn't need you?" Broyles asks him, his voice incredulous. "You're brilliant in your own right. You understand Walter. You're privy to a surplus of classified government secrets, some we're familiar with, but others we can't even begin to fathom. Do you know how much information we've gained from you? About shapeshifters, about Observers, about-"

"No disrespect, sir," he interrupts, "but, while it's great that I've become a walking Fringe Division encyclopedia, you'll find that being pumped for information isn't the most fulfilling existence."

Broyles pauses, considering his words.

"I'm sure Walter will come around," he offers finally.

"It's not just Walter. I mean, it's _everyone_. Walter, sure, but Astrid, Lincoln, Nina, hell, _you_ even, and _Olivia_."

His voice breaks, and he drops his head.

" _Olivia_ ," he breathes.

"Did you have them over there?"

He shrugs. "I guess. Not in the same way I used to have _these_ people, but yeah. They were friendly with me, at least. That's better than nothing."

"Then why did you come back?"

He opens his mouth, but stops. He's not sure how to answer him.

He came back because the Olivia he saw when he closed his eyes, the Olivia wearing one of his blue dress shirts, her blonde hair splayed over the pillow, her hands under her head, wasn't in that other universe.

 _She's not in this one, either_ , he thinks.

 _Give her time_ , says a voice inside his head. _She needs time._

How much _time_?

He whispers, "I don't know."

* * *

He gets into his car and drives to her apartment. Why? He's not sure. Is he going to knock on her door, fall on his knees, and beseech her to take him back? Has she reduced him to a beggar?

He laughs to himself. Of course she has. He'd do anything for her. He's already done so much - destroyed universes, traveled through time, ceased to exist.

Of course he'd beg for her. If only he thought it would make a difference.

The windows of her apartment are dark, so he parks across the street and turns off the engine. Then he waits.

He leans back in his seat, and dozes on and off until the glare of headlights awakes him. He sits up and sees her get out of her black SUV across the street. He's about to open his door when he sees Lincoln walk around the other side.

They open the trunk and pull grocery bags from the car. Lincoln, apparently, says something funny, because Olivia opens her mouth and laughs. He's sure if he was outside his car, he would hear it, that beautiful noise being carried away through the air of a February night in Boston.

His heart breaks into uncountable pieces and his hands tighten around the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. That should be _him_ , damn it. That should be him standing next to her, touching her, making her laugh.

Lincoln closes the trunk and presses his lips to her forehead.

He has took look away, and he lays his head against the cool glass of the driver's-side window.

He closes his eyes. She's waiting there for him.

She crawls into his bed, and shuts her eyes, letting out a contented hum. Her nose rubs against his.

_"I could get used to this."_

He'd seldom seen her so gratified, so peaceful. This was what it was like to see his Olivia happy. It had made his heart swell, the fact that he had caused this. _He_ truly was the reason behind her bliss.

They had used each other in the most beautiful way. True happiness was a feeling that they created together, with each other. It was something they couldn't have on their own. He needed her, then.

She needed him.

And while he still desperately needs her, while he'll _always_ need her no matter what happens, maybe the biggest difference between his Olivia and the one standing across the street from him now, the Olivia who gives him the cold shoulder and kisses another man, the Olivia who has no clue who he is, is that this Olivia doesn't need him to be happy. She doesn't need him to hold her and tell her everything will be alright.

She doesn't need him.

"She doesn't need me," he says into the emptiness of his car.

He's drowning. He can't feel his tears as they fall down his face. They mix with the water all around him. He can't breathe and he's so cold and so numb.

"Olivia," he chokes out.

He's in his room again, but she's not lying next to him. Instead she crouches next to the bed, her hand outstretched towards him. He grabs it. She smiles softly.

"I should go," she tells him.

He shakes head furiously. "No."

"No," he yells. He wipes his eyes and lifts his head off of the window. He looks across the street. His heart stops.

She is standing on the steps leading to her home. The front door is open, the lights in her apartment turned on. Lincoln is not there. There is a spilled bag of groceries at her feet. A carton of milk has broken and a thin white stream trickles down the sidewalk.

She's staring at him. Directly into his eyes.

And he pleads with God, a God he never used to believe in, to give him a sign that will let him know this woman is _his Olivia_ , somewhere deep inside herself. An indication that everything is going to turn out alright.

He stares into her green eyes.

_Please God. Please God._

He remembers how once, her alternate asked him what she was like.

_"She's a lot like you. A little darker in the eyes, maybe. She's always trying to make up for something, right some imaginary wrong. Haunted, I guess… **Maybe she's nothing like you at all.** "_

He stares into her eyes. And he makes a devastating realization. One that tears up his insides and makes him want to die.

He doesn't know who this woman is.

_**"Maybe she's nothing like you at all."** _

Hot tears fall down his face and off his chin, landing on his hands.

He doesn't _care_. He doesn't care. He'll still fight for her, fight for _them_. He'll find some way to make this right. He'll find some way to make things like they were.

If only she'll give him a sign.

He stares at her, his eyes red, tear-filled, and desperate.

" _Please_ , Olivia."

She moves her foot toward him. His face breaks out into a grin.

" _Yes._ "

But then a figure appears in the doorway behind her. She turns.

He _hates_ Special Agent Lincoln Lee.

The man picks up the carton of milk and the spilled groceries. Then he takes her hand and pulls her towards the building.

" _No_ , Olivia."

The couple walks into the apartment. The door shuts behinds them.

She doesn't even glance back. Not once.

He's drowning.

* * *

He holds her hand across the bed. He wants her next to him again, but when he tries to pull her closer, she resists, and glances back at the door.

"I should go," she says again.

"No. You can't."

She bites her lip, and looks at him with apologetic eyes.

"But I have to."

He shakes his head again. "No you don't. You _can't_ leave me."

"Peter…"

"What am I supposed to do without you?" A tear runs down his nose and lands on the pillow with a soft plop.

"You'll figure something out."

"I don't want to. I miss you. I _want you_."

She squeezes his hand. "I know."

"What am I going to do?"

"I don't know," she answers honestly. "But you're going to be fine."

She glances at the door again.

"It's time for me to go."

"I love you, Olivia," he says quietly.

She smiles sadly, and brings his hand up to her mouth, kissing his knuckles gently.

"I love you, too."

She stands, her legs long and smooth, the dress shirt falling to the tops of her thighs. Her blonde hair cascades over her right shoulder, shining in the sunlight coming from behind him. Her green eyes bore into his blue ones.

She's all he wants. All he's ever wanted and all he'll ever want.

"It's time to let me go, Peter."

He's silent for a few moments, wordlessly begging her for another way out, a different option where he gets to keep her.

But this is the only way.

He nods his head slowly.

"Okay," he breathes, the word almost lost even in the still room. "Okay."

It's the hardest thing he's ever done.

But he slowly lets her hand slip from his.

On a cold February day in Boston, in the wee hours of the morning, his head resting on the steering wheel of his car as he dreams, the trails his tears created on his face long dried, Peter Bishop does the unthinkable.

Peter Bishop lets go of his Olivia Dunham.

* * *

He awakes with a start, to the sound of a siren driving past his car. He reaches for his phone in the darkness. The screen illuminates, and he reads 3:11 am.

He sits up, and runs a hand over his face.

He's such a broken man.

He's cold, he's numb, he's drowned and dead and alone in the depths of the lake. When he closes his eyes, all he sees is black.

She's gone.

What does he do now?

 _"You're going to be fine."_ That's what she told him.

He doesn't believe her.

What do you do when the person you love doesn't need you anymore?

What does he do now?

Peter Bishop's feet start to tingle.

* * *

 

He abandons his car in an alley a few blocks from her house and throws his phone over a bridge a few streets down from that. He watches it shatter into pieces when it hits the pavement below.

Leaving, it's not the courageous or honorable thing to do, he admits. But with his past, it's the easy thing to do, and he is tired of trying so hard.

He walks down a street in the back neighborhoods of Boston, the ones that they hide from tourists, college students, and prospective home owners. Every city has them. He knows Boston's like the back of his hand.

Being on the street in this area, all by himself, so late at night? Ill-advised.

But he is tired of caring. And he is already dead.

He comes to a house with a single light on in the front room. He walks up the stairs to the entrance and knocks on the door with three quick raps. There is noise behind the barrier, and then the door creaks open just a crack. A man with dark eyes and hair pokes his head out.

"What do you want?"

"You're Trevor, right?" he asks.

The man's eyebrows scrunch together.

"Yeah. And you are?"

"Not important."

"Do we know each other?"

"Not yet."

The man eyes him up and down.

"What do you want?"

Peter smirks.

"I'd like to speak with Big Eddie."

* * *

One winter day in steamy Baghdad, Iraq, in a different version of the same world, Olivia Dunham made Peter Bishop stop running.

Four years, several universes, and a few time-loops later, she makes him start again.


End file.
